Saddam could face trial inside two months, says Iraqi president

SADDAM Hussein could be put on trial "within two months", Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, said yesterday.

Mr Talabani said "the court of Iraq will decide the future of Saddam Hussein" and that there was a strong public desire for him to be executed if convicted.

"Saddam Hussein is a war criminal," Mr Talabani said, noting that he had committed "crimes against Iraqi people" in Kurdistan as well as Shiite areas of southern Iraq and in Baghdad.

Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam’s lawyer, expressed surprise at Mr Talabani’s comment. "I was not informed officially that they are speeding up the trial, but anyway I will check tomorrow and then I will have a comment," he said.

Saddam’s trial could prove to be a highly divisive issue in an already turbulent Iraq and starting the court proceedings in two months could coincide with the process to draft the constitution.

The constitution must be produced by mid-August and approved in a referendum two months later. Approval would lead to elections in December.

Saddam, who was captured in December 2003, has been jailed at a complex near Baghdad airport named Camp Cropper, which holds 110 high-profile detainees.

Charges against him include killing rival politicians during his 30-year rule, gassing Kurds, invading Kuwait and suppressing Kurdish and Shiite uprisings in 1991.

Elsewhere in Iraq, separate air crashes killed four United States and four Italian troops, officials said yesterday. The governor of Anbar province was also killed during clashes between US forces and the insurgents who abducted him three weeks ago.

The cause of the two air crashes was not known. A single-engined Comp Air 7SL aircraft crashed on Monday near the village of Jalula, about 80 miles north-east of Baghdad, killing the four Americans and the Iraqi pilot. The aircraft, one of seven used by the Iraqi air force for surveillance and personnel transport, had been heading for Jalula from a Kirkuk air base, the military said in a statement.

An Italian AB-412 military helicopter crashed overnight about eight miles south-east of Nasiriyah, killing its two pilots and two passengers. Most of Italy’s 3,000 troops are based in Nasiriyah, and 26 have been killed.